Source: Team_Talk
Jones hails 'patched-up' Bluebirds
Former Aston Villa midfielder Peter Whittingham struck with eight minutes remaining to cancel out Michael O'Connor's first-half opener.[LNB]The draw came at the end of a difficult week for the Bluebirds, with illness hitting the club, and Jones revealed a number of players put in more of a shift than they had been expecting.[LNB]"After everything that has been going on this week at our club we have to look upon this point as a very good result," declared Jones. "We have had a virus running through the place that has affected a number of our players.[LNB]"We had to patch them up and send them out and I'm proud of the performance they produced.[LNB]"I told two or three of them I would only be asking them to play for an hour - but I fibbed.[LNB]"We started slowly and I'm not sure whether that was down to the effects of the virus or not.[LNB]"We had some luck with our equaliser but in this game you work hard to make your own luck and I thought we did that."[LNB]It was a 16th goal of the season by the Championship's leading marksman Whittingham that saved the visitors a point when they looked destined for defeat.[LNB]But his 82nd-minute shot from the edge of the box took a wicked deflection off Scunthorpe centre-back David Mirfin before looping into the back of the net over goalkeeper Josh Lillis.[LNB]Earlier Scunthorpe had made a flying start with midfield man O'Connor firing them in front after just 11 minutes with a free-kick from the edge of the box.[LNB]They went on to produce one of their best home performances of the season with some slick passing football and almost made it 2-0 in the 79th minute when leading marksman Gary Hooper had an effort scrambled off the line by Cardiff centre-back Mark Hudson.[LNB]Scunthorpe manager Nigel Adkins was pleased with his side's performance, saying: "We lost 4-0 at Cardiff on the opening day of the season so this result shows just how far we have developed since then.[LNB]"I thought we played some excellent football in the first half and it was a great finish from O'Connor that put us in front.[LNB]"We are an honest hardworking team who played good football on what was a difficult pitch.[LNB]"We nearly got the second goal we needed with the shot that was cleared off the line and then Cardiff go down the opposite end and equalise with a really lucky deflection.[LNB]"But we can hold our heads up high, this was another good result for us. We're continuing to move in the right direction and we might have had a penalty right at the end when substitute Jonathan Forte went down in the box.[LNB]"The video replay clearly shows that Cardiff goalkeeper David Marshall touched him before he went down."[LNB][LNB]
